Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/54

 accelerated progress may be capable of: and I do not see wherein the direct reproduction suggested is any more inconceivable than, for example, telephony, or even photography, must have been to a man of a hundred years ago. The greatest danger attending our attempt to preconceive the amenities of the next century is that we may limit our expectations too narrowly.

On this ground, perhaps, I may be thought too cautious in assuming that the present form of alphabetical writing and printing will survive at all. But there are two things which seem likely to give it permanence. The first, of course, is literature. If we adopt an entirely new form of writing and printing for general use, we must either set to work to translate all our literature into it, thereby probably losing some formal beauties which the culture of the world will not consent to sacrifice; or we must make up our minds to use (as the Japanese do at present) two kinds of writing concurrently; and the difficulty of overcoming the vast inertia of the human mind (which alone still suffices to exclude from English commerce so obviously convenient an innovation as decimal coinage) will probably negative this. This inertia is the second consideration likely to give permanence to our present form of English alphabetical writing.

However this may be, the convenience of